by Tom Clancy
* * *
It was, he thought, a bad run of snake eyes. He’d been set up twice in as many days, and on both instances had felt bound to confront his opposition when it was their two against his one — only this time he couldn’t count on Pete Nimec popping out of nowhere to even the odds.
Crouched low in a clump of juniper bushes perhaps five yards behind the jut of rock he’d noticed from the skiff, Ricci had just heard Cobbs and Dex working out a cover story to account for his “disappearance.” Simple, but it didn’t have to be anything more: Bumptious, know-it-all city boy Ricci had been diving for weeks without letting modest, conscientious local boy Dex properly check and maintain his scuba equipment, and since a tender couldn’t do his job if the diver insisted on being foolhardy, Dex had given up trying to argue the point with him. Divers had gotten into bad fixes before through their own carelessness, and it would surely happen again in the future.
If Ricci’s body didn’t turn up, that would be that. And in the unlikely event it happened to float ashore before scavenging crabs, lobsters, and groundfish picked it apart, even an honest investigator would conclude Ricci had died from an out-of-air accident due to instrument failure, based upon a post mortem exam and the faulty reading on his psi gauge. Why suspect the gauge had been jiggered with by his partner when there was no evidence of a prior falling out between them; indeed, when any of the dealers with whom they regularly did business would attest they’d seemed to get along fine as a team? And besides, considering that Dex would be handing his pile of homespun horseshit to the sheriff or one of his deputies, and would have Cobbs signing off on it, he could probably chalk Ricci’s fate up to a Big-foot attack, alien abduction, or head-on collision with the Flying Dutchman and get away with it, no sweat.
Ricci looked and listened from the concealment of the brush. In their own way they were good, he thought, the only monkey wrench in their scheme being that he was better and savvier. His mistake — and he acknowledged it was significant — had been underestimating how far Dex could be pushed. Ricci had known Dex had his weaknesses, and they’d never quite been friends, but had always gotten on all right as partners. Much as he disliked admitting it to himself, he’d started out being a cop with a deep-rooted core of positivism, and some rudiments of that attitude remained stubbornly lodged inside him despite having spent years exploring the darkest alleys of human nature. He’d been hesitant to think the worst of his partner, and had almost paid for it big-time.
Ricci breathed quietly, motionless, watching the two men stand and talk in the small, pebble-sprinkled clearing around the big rock. He had approached them through the woods at a diagonal, and was more or less behind Cobbs, who was turned toward the beach, with Dex facing inland in Ricci’s general direction. While they had been ironing out the main points of their little deception, he’d put the finishing touches on a plan of his own, and it too was pretty bare. Cobbs had a weapon — not the sharpshooter’s rifle Ricci had speculated about earlier, but a Remington pump, which at close range could pack an even deadlier wallop — and so would have to be taken down first. This time there was no truck door to pin his sorry ass in, but the shotgun would only be a problem if he had the chance to use it. As for Dex… he was unarmed, and would be easy.
Surprise and the ability to hit fast and hard were then Ricci’s best assets. He’d abandoned his scuba tank, fins, and mask in the woods, and left himself wearing only the dry suit and knife rigs. The urchin knife would be of marginal use offensively and was in its scabbard. The pointed, double-edged blade was in his right hand. That baby had the meanness in it.
A breeze fluttered through the woods, and Ricci eased partially out of his crouch using the rustle of leaves, branches, and weeds to cover the sound of his movement. When the wind died down he stopped, then waited for another gust to stir the foliage and stole forward, falling back on his SEALs training again, obeying tried and proven fundamentals of stalking one’s quarry. Registering one leg in front of the other. Touching the ground with the ball of his foot and slowly lowering his heel while scanning for rocks, fallen leaves, anything that might trip him up or be disturbed by his weight. Shifting direction every few steps so that the brush wouldn’t sway unnaturally and attract attention.
The wind quieted. He paused. The two men were still talking. Cobbs’s back was now less than three feet in front of him through the brush that constituted Ricci’s self-designated skirmish line. Another draft of wind and he would launch from his concealed position, tackle Cobbs from behind, and hopefully disarm him before he could get off a single shot.
It was the squirrel that screwed things up.
* * *
“… want to make it look good, you ought to wait another couple hours, then phone in a diver emergency to me and the sheriff’s office,” Cobbs was saying. “I’ll handle it like any other—”
He stopped talking and gave Dex a questioning glance.
Dex had suddenly cast his eyes toward the maple tree on which he’d noticed the munching squirrel a short while before. Already on heightened guard because of his and Cobbs’s near proximity, it had been startled from its perch and abruptly gone bounding up the tree amid a loud rattle of branches, dropping the seed pod it had been clutching in its obvious fright. This instigated a sort of chain reaction, the commotion sending a jolt through Dex’s tightly wound nerves, prompting him to jerk his head up toward the squirrel, then drop his gaze to the creeping junipers below it — and just a few feet behind Cobbs — to find out what could have sent the little animal fleeing
That was when he saw a dead man about to spring from between two of the bushes in a semi-crouch, his fist clenched around the haft of a long knife.
His face all at once draining of color, his mouth yawping open, too shocked to utter more than a wordless cry of alarm and incomprehension, he thrust out his arm to frantically gesture in Ricci’s direction.
Without knowing what was going on except that something had scared the living daylights out of Dex, Cobbs spun on his heels, raised his shotgun, and brought its barrel around to where he was pointing.
* * *
Ricci was about to make his move when he heard the spooked squirrel in the treetop, then saw Dex turn to investigate its racket, his eyes sweeping up the tree, then down to land directly upon him and widen with stunned confusion.
There was no time to hesitate. Even as Dex began gesturing wildly — and a split second before Cobbs swiveled his upraised shotgun around toward him — Ricci broke from cover and came at the warden in a scrambling, straight-ahead run, ducking below the shotgun’s muzzle.
The gun roared above his head, its load gouging into the tree trunk behind Ricci and flurrying the area with shaves and splinters of bark. Cobbs rocked backward from the weapon’s kick, but was surprisingly quick to recover, and managed to chamber another round before Ricci could reach him. Ricci heard the chock-chock of the Remington’s pump action and saw Cobbs swing it down at him, and charged in underneath it with his knees bent, then sprang to his full height, grabbed the middle of its barrel with his left hand, and forced the muzzle upward. Cobbs squeezed the trigger on reflex and shot a second load of steel pellets harmlessly into the air.
Without releasing the weapon’s barrel, Ricci smashed his right forearm against Cobbs’s neck, then hit him twice on the jaw with his elbow while jerking the shotgun around hard to the left.
Cobbs’s chin snapped to the side and blood instantly began streaming from his mouth. His lips stretched into a grimace of fury and pain, he managed to hang onto the gun, but Ricci pushed close against him, using both his hand and body to keep the barrel angled upward and sideways. Cobbs hung on. Ricci had not thought he would have as much fight in him, but anger and adrenaline could give people the strength to stay committed. Still, he had to finish him before Dex got involved.
Ricci shoved against him with his chest, forcing him to stumble backward. The moment he had him off balance, Ricci jammed his right elbow into Cobbs’s stomach and, a
s he doubled over with a groan, finally got the shotgun out of his hands.
A moment later Ricci dropped down into a squat and shoved his dive knife into the top of Cobbs’s boot, putting his arm and shoulder into the blow, driving in the blade until all six inches of it had penetrated his foot and sunk into the dirt beneath him.
Cobbs released a howling, animalistic scream that grew in volume and shrillness as he tried to lift his impaled foot off the ground and realized that he couldn’t. His face bright crimson, the whites of his eyes enormous, he looked down at himself and saw blood swell up around the knife handle projecting from the upper part of his boot, simultaneously draining from where the blade had cut through its treaded rubber sole. His screams reached a ragged peak of hysteria and cracked apart, dissolving into moist snuffles.
“Look what you done to me!” he whimpered, and sank to his knees, looking up at Ricci, water gushing from his eyes. Blood smudged his lips and chin like grotesque stage makeup, and there was a slurry thickness to his speech that told Ricci his jaw had either been dislocated or broken. “Oh, fuck Oh, oh, sweet God, look what you fucking done!”
Ricci ignored him. He had straightened up and could see the bushes thrashing to his left where Dex had plunged into the woods. So much for his helping Cobbs. Ricci whipped off after him, both hands around the shotgun he’d torn from Cobbs’s grasp.
Dex’s lead was slight and his panic flung him blindly through the low branches and undergrowth. He stumbled over roots, crashed against bushes and tree limbs.
Despite the relative bulkiness of his dry suit, Ricci closed the distance between them in less than a minute.
“Hold it, Dex! Not another step!” he called out, and pumped a fresh cartridge into the chamber of the Remington. “I mean it.”
Dex halted under an arcade of pine branches. He was panting from fear and exertion.
“Turn around,” Ricci said. “Slow.”
Dex did as he’d been told.
Ricci moved forward, the gun barrel out in front of him, his finger on the trigger.
Dex stood there in a sort of half slump, still panting, his long hair wet from sweat and pasted to his cheeks and neck. He glanced at Ricci a moment, and then cast his eyes down at some indeterminate patch of ground between them.
Ricci stepped closer, pushed the muzzle of the gun against the underside of Dex’s chin, and forced his head upward.
“Look at me,” Ricci said. And pushed his chin further up with the muzzle. “Look me in the eye.”
Dex again did as he’d been told.
“First thing,” Ricci said. “You’re a greedy little slug.”
Dex was quiet, his lips trembling. Perspiration streamed from under his watchcap.
“Second,” Ricci said. “You’re a would-be murderer.”
Dex started to say something, but Ricci silenced him with a prod of the gun barrel.
“I can make it so there’s nothing left under that hat of yours besides mush,” he said. “Better you let me do the talking.”
Dex shut his mouth.
They faced each other in silence. The interwoven branches overhead blocked out most of the morning sunlight and cast lacy patterns of shadow over both their features.
“We always split the take right down the middle, and that was fine by me. Didn’t matter I took the chances, long as you did your job and watched my back,” Ricci said. “But then you went behind it instead. Got down with Cobbs and Phipps on that pinch the other day. Fixed the pressure gauge so I wouldn’t know when my tank was out of air. Emptied my spare. Rather than coming to me when Cobbs laid some heat on you, telling me so we could put him in his place, you cuddled up with him and tried to kill me.”
Ricci was silent again. From behind him near the slab of rock, he could hear Cobbs’s whimpering sobs.
“I owe you, Dex,” Ricci said. “You deserve for me to pull the trigger, and better believe I’m tempted to do it.”
Dex tensed, his breath coming in staccato bursts. Small blotches of red erupted on his cheeks.
Ricci held the shotgun steadily up to his chin for another second, then shook his head and lowered its barrel toward the ground.
“Relax,” he said. “You, Cobbs, and all your other pals won’t have to worry about me anymore. Wouldn’t have even if nothing had happened today besides us striking the mother lode of urchins. Because I got an offer from somebody out of town and decided to take it. All you would’ve needed to do to know that was wait till this afternoon, when the for-sale sign goes up in front of my house.”
More silence. Dex had a cowed, beaten expression on his face and seemed on the verge of squirming. Yet Ricci sensed he had little true remorse over the wrong he had done and only a partial understanding of its depth. In his own eyes he was a victim and that status both justified his actions and absolved him of blame. The shame in him was mostly over having gotten caught.
“Cobbs’ll be okay,” Ricci said. “I’m running the skiff back to the wharf. The two of you wait till maybe fifteen minutes after I’m gone, then take his boat, get him to the hospital. Anybody asks what happened to him, leave me out of your story. Or I give you my word, you’ll pay.”
Silence.
Ricci looked at him, and felt a sudden abhorrence that came close to making him physically sick. Then he gestured back the way they had come with his head.
“Get out of my sight,” he said at last.
Dex hesitated a moment, as if he still thought there was something he ought to say but didn’t know what it should be, or was afraid it might get him fouled up again. Then he simply nodded, stepped past Ricci, and started to walk away through the woods.
“And, Dex?”
Dex stopped, glanced back over his shoulder.
“Don’t worry,” Ricci said. “I’m sure you’ll manage to live with yourself.”
SEVENTEEN
VARIOUS LOCALES APRIL 22, 2001
Harlan Devane sat opposite Kuhl at a cane table on his veranda, dealing out a hand of solitaire as the engorged red sun sank through the evening sky into the Bolivian rain forest.
“Give me your assessment,” he said without raising his eyes from the cards.
“The pulse device should fulfill its requirements,” Kuhl said. “We are close to ready for the endgame.”
DeVane turned over a card and examined it. A jack of diamonds. He laid it atop a queen of clubs.
“The trial run seems to have made an outstanding impression on you,” he said.
“Yes,” Kuhl said. “The damage to the train surpassed every expectation.”
DeVane nodded and glanced up from the table.
“Your emphasis on the amount of carnage that resulted fascinates me, Siegfried,” he said. “Do you know the piece of information I find most useful after having heard your account?”
Kuhl looked at him with absolute stillness but did not reply. There was no sign on his face that he was considering an answer, and indeed DeVane would have been surprised and disappointed if he’d had anything to say. The most efficient predator never revealed its thinking, or made it obvious if it was thinking at all. Could anyone know the mind of a shark? A python?
“The signal light,” DeVane said in response to his own question. “That you saw it come back on within seconds of the derailment indicates its circuits were left intact, and able to work normally once the disruption to the electromagnetic field ceased. Not only will the reason for the light’s malfunction never be ascertained, there is no hard evidence a malfunction occurred. The cause of the train wreck will be impossible to determine or trace, and therefore we cannot be incriminated. This to me is the salient detail with regard to our larger objectives.”
Kuhl’s eyes were like small windows into a vast frozen reach.
“If I hadn’t thought it important, it would not have been included in my report,” he said.
“And I welcome your thoroughness.” DeVane studied the neat rows of playing cards in front of him. There was a four of spades in one, a
six of clubs in another. He flipped another three off the deck. “Of course, while there is no need for you to explain your selection of a target, I did admittedly find it intriguing.”
“Oh?”
DeVane nodded.
“Why a passenger train as opposed to something like a freight train? I wondered. Why send human beings over that hillside rather than cattle or lumber, the accompanying loss of life being nonessential to the test?” He turned over three more cards. “And then the answer came to me. In a snap, as they say.”
Kuhl said nothing.
DeVane looked directly at him. “Are you acquainted with the paintings of Brueghel or Hieronymus Bosch?” he asked.
Kuhl shook his head. “I’ve no interest in art.”
“Perhaps not, but you might want to make an exception and seek theirs out anyway. ‘The Last Judgment,’ ‘The Triumph of Death,’ ‘The Beggars’… they are works filled with marvelous deviltry, to mangle the words of a poet who admired Brueghel in particular.” DeVane smiled. “Very little is known about either man, and most of their oils are undated. We know both lived in the Middle Ages, about a century apart. Who commissioned their paintings, what specifications they were given, whether they ever painted to please themselves rather than their patrons… these things are mostly open to conjecture. But their styles and monstrous images cannot be confused with anyone else’s, and must have bordered upon the heretical in their day. One sees a Bosch canvas, one does not need a signature to identify the cruel, exacting hand of its creator. The work itself is signature enough.”
Kuhl met his gaze.
“I don’t get your point.”
DeVane smiled.
“I think you do, despite my occasional tendency to be elliptical,” he said. “Please accept that I implied no disrespect. To the contrary, I see you as a master of your trade, an invisible artist whose handiwork is unmistakable to the studied connoisseur. And I enjoy giving you creative leeway.”
DeVane turned over more cards. Kuhl watched him, showing neither interest nor disinterest.